Are you Agile?

Have you been told recently to start using Agile? To be more Agile? 

What does that even mean?  Although more yoga would probably be a great thing for your wellness, that type of flexibility is likely not what they are referring to by Agile.  

Agile is a style of managing and accomplishing your work.  It is more than just "scrum" and more than just developing a flexible to-do list (backlog).  It's a means of operating that embraces the unknown.  It's saying, we have the appropriate skills and training on our team that will allow us to get to the end, without knowing every facit and detail at the beginning.

Recently, the directors for my work group wanted to develop a new high level strategy, goals and objectives to guide us for the next five years.  I suggeted using an agile framework to get us where we have a working document that can be improved, iterated on, developed, and detailed out as time allows, as the programs and leadership demand.

Another strong theory of where agile will thrive in upcoming project work is where the scientific method could be employed to help solve a problem such as with website vistation and information communication.  If, in trying to improve your website's information delivery, you can ask the question "why are we having such a high bounce rate for users in the 18-32 year old group?".  You might then theorize, hypothesize, build and test new designs.  You might fail, but chose to fail rapidly and learn from those failures.  You might have successes, and choose to celebrate and build on those successes.  

Agile does not require that you know all the business requirements, needs, and details up front.  It encourages you to find the best path as you go forward with frequent feedback and rapid growth.